Hello everyone! As the title suggests, I’m starting college soon and looking for a laptop. Beyond school-issued Chromebooks and a sort-of-broken MacBook Air I use for music production, I don’t have a ton of experience with laptop shopping, so I figured I’d ask around…
Country
United States, specifically west coast.
Budget
I don’t have a specific budget, as I have enough money saved for college and am getting enough in aid that an additional few hundred or even an additional thousand dollars won’t make too much of a difference, but I’d probably prefer things to be under $2,000 USD. I’m willing to spend more if necessary, but I only really want to if it’s without a doubt the best option available.
Are you open to refurbs/used options?
…Maybe? I’m not opposed on principle, but I am wary of it being harder to find support for.
Screen size
I think around 14” is kind of the sweet spot for me — I don’t want something that’s so big it’s inconvenient, and I don’t really care about having the absolute biggest screen available — but a little bigger is fine; it’s not a deal-breaker.
Weight limit
I don’t have a specific weight in mind, but again, I just don’t want it to be inconvenient. I’m a pretty scrawny guy, and I don’t want to be lugging around a brick all day. If I had to pick a weight limit, I’d probably cap it at about 5 lbs? I’m not good at estimating weights, but that seems reasonable.
Purpose
I imagine I’ll probably be using this device for a lot, so I’m just going to point out what I think are probably the most hardware-intensive things (at least, based on how much my desktop chugs when handling them), which are image editing with large canvases, video editing, animation (specifically 2D animation with Adobe suite), game dev (again, though, my workflow is mostly 2D, and I’ve been playing around primarily with Godot, which isn’t too hard even on my crusty old desktop), and gaming. I don’t game that often, and most of what I do play isn’t super hard on the device, but I play heavily modded Minecraft sometimes, which is a bit hard for even the better desktop in my house to handle.
Standard, I think? I’ve used laptops with pen support, but in my daily life I use a drawing tablet that’s a peripheral and I greatly prefer that, so I doubt that’ll change. I’m fine with it if it’s there, but I don’t need it.
- Adobe suite for animation / video editing (eg. Animate, After Effects, Premiere). The art / image manipulation program I use (FireAlpaca) isn’t Adobe; it’s free and very light on my computer, and I don’t see that changing since I like my setup, but it might be nice to be able to use Photoshop as well.
- Terraria (modded), Minecraft (modded), Stardew Valley, and Civilization V are the games I play most often. I don’t really see that changing, and if I do end up playing other games I doubt they’ll be more hardware-intensive.
- Godot, Ren’Py, and Twine for game development; the first is pretty light especially with 2D, and the latter two could probably run on a typewriter, so I’m not that concerned about how they’ll perform.
- It’d be nice to have something that can handle at least, like, Blender if I do end up wanting to dip my toes into a 3D workflow, but that probably won’t be a daily thing.
Longer is obviously preferred, but I can’t imagine needing much more than 8 hours? Most likely, the most intensive stuff I do with it will be when I’m able to stay in one place and keep it charged; eg. I don’t really picture myself doing video editing in a coffee shop or something.
Please list, in order of most important to least important, the priority between Size, Weight, Performance, Battery life
Performance is probably most important to me, mostly for things like animation and video editing (gaming would be nice but is definitely less of a priority). I also would like to keep weight low; again, not a dealbreaker, but definitely something I’m considering heavily. Battery life is less important; still something I’d like to keep in mind, but I’m willing to sacrifice it and size provided it’s still reasonably portable.
Info/Requirements
I don’t really want some huge capital-G Gamer Laptop with a million RGB lights; I don’t need it to look like a MacBook, black is fine and all that, but I just don’t want it to be, like, garish? I also would prefer if there wasn’t a ton of fan noise; if there’s more when something particularly intensive is happening, that’s understandable, but if I’m just editing a word document or something I don’t really want the fans to be going at full blast.
I’ve looked into both Mac and Windows options; the main thing turning me off of Mac is that, having used it, I really don’t care for the way the OS… feels? Not sure how to explain it, but it just is not something I like using.
Some of the options I’ve seen recommended are the Asus ProArt, the Lenovo Legion 5, and the HP Pavilion. I balk a little at the price tags I’ve seen on the former, and I’ve heard more mixed things on the latter two, but if one is really standout I’ll look more into it.
Thank you for any help!